Mario D. Garrett, PhD discusses the scientific revolution currently happening in dementia studies, dementia errors that impact research, and the importance of social interaction for patients with dementia.

Clinical neuropsychologist Eric Freitag of Sport Concussion Program explains the risks and medical implications of concussions. Learn how to spot a concussion, when to see a doctor, and how treatment should progress.

Cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans include humor, morality, symbolism, creativity, and preoccupation with the minds of others. In these compelling talks, emphasis is placed on the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness.

UC San Diego neuroscientists Ralph Greenspan and Nicholas Spitzer join Kris Famm of GlaxoSmithKline and James Fallows of The Atlantic for a look into the future of brain research. This program is part of The Atlantic Meets the Pacific 2013 series presented by The Atlantic and UCSD.

Big Bang! is the annual UC Davis Business Plan Competition, hosted by the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and organized by MBA students of the Graduate School of Management. Find out the winners of this year’s competition.

Katherine Gundling, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Allergy and Immunology at UCSF, and Practice Chief of the Allergy/Immunology clinic at Moffitt Hospital examines the essential purpose of the immune system and how living with a primary disorder of immunity can affect daily life.

Charles Kennel, Former Scripps Institution of Oceanography director and chair of the National Academy’s Space Science Board, reviews what NASA’s space program has accomplished, what it is doing now, and what the future holds for human space exploration.

Curtis Cramblett, PT, CFMT, CSCS has been an avid cyclist and racer for more than 20 years and has spent thousands of hours on his bike. He shares his expertise on proper bike fit including what a good bike fit feels like, your biomechanical needs, and adjusting your bike to your body.

Tracy DiNunzio, Founder and CEO of Tradesy a fashion resale website, talks about what it took to get her company off the ground. She is also the CEO and founder of Recycled Bride, the Web’s largest wedding resale marketplace, which launched in 2009.

Enjoy this unique opportunity to experience Kagura (sacred music and ritual dances) from Chichibu, in the first and only US performance of the shrine’s Kagura troupe. Chichibu Kagura, dating back to approximately the seventeenth century, with a repertory based on ancient myths, has been designated by the government as an Important Formless Folkloric Cultural Property.

What opportunities are in the burgeoning craft brewing industry? In this Career Channel presentation, you’ll learn the answers from a panel of experts that includes Stone Brewing founder Greg Koch, Lost Abbey brewer Tomme Arthur, Ballast Point brewer and co-founder Yuseff Cherney, and the founder of White Labs Inc. Pure Yeast and Fermentation, Chris White.

Dr. Jay Levyan, an AIDS and cancer researcher at UCSF, discusses the discovery of HIV and its basic science. Then, Dr. C. Bradley Hare, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Medical Director, UCSF HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital, explores HIV and its diseases through case presentations from the clinic.

Harry Kreisler welcomes Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker for a discussion of his intellectual journey. Topics include: Milton Friedman, his early work on discrimination, the skills and temperament required for work in economics, applying economic analysis to social problems, the Chicago school of economics, creativity, rational choice theory, markets vs. government, the impact of ideas on policy, the communications revolution, and the lessons of the 2008 economic collapse.

Brylyne Chitsunge is an internationally acclaimed expert and facilitator of the Nigeria-South Africa Group on Agriculture and a tireless advocate for farmers in her native South Africa. Chitsunge counts herself among the 70 percent of farmers who are women in South Africa. Despite the challenges, she was able to buy her own land and works as a farmer and breeder of Kalahari Red goats, Nguni cattle, free range poultry, indigenous pigs and most recently Tilapia fish.

Dr. Robert Lustig, UCSF Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, updates his very popular video Sugar: The Bitter Truth. He argues that sugar and processed foods are driving the obesity epidemic, which in turn affects our endocrine system. In UCTV’s documentary, The Skinny on Obesity, Dr. Lustig and his colleagues discuss the root causes of the obesity epidemic.

With no medical care available in the village of Wli Todzi, those in need of serious medical attention must be carried by stretcher down the mountain. Rise Up Development Collective is raising funds to build a clinic.

While studying abroad in Ghana, UC Santa Cruz student Jeremy Kirshbaum launched an effort to help residents of a remote mountain village construct a life-saving medical clinic. Now, students at UC Santa Cruz are helping residents of this mountain community acquire critical funding and health resources through ecotourism, bead sales and benefit concerts, while forging enduring connections across continents and cultures.

One of these remarkable people is Samantha Lynne Wilson, a youth organizer and community builder who, as a UC Riverside undergraduate, enrolled in a program that took her to Hyderabad, India (you can watch her “Going Places” segment here). There she founded and currently serves as the Executive Learner of the Child Leader Project (CLP)— a non-profit organization designed to create safe spaces for young people from Southern California to South India in addressing social justice issues in their local communities.

We asked Wilson if she had some words of advice for students preparing for their own international adventures and she most certainly did. Here they are:

And Who Invited You?: What Every Student Should Ask Before Traveling AbroadContributed by Samantha Lynne Wilson

I have a bone to pick with success stories: they focus too deeply on one person, neglecting the ecology of people and moments that craft change. Perhaps this blog can be one step towards addressing that.

The far more important and more amazing narrative for one to know (if you are to know anything about my experience in India) are the stories of the young adults in South India expanding the work of child and youth leadership with their own experience, leadership and vision– in India, right now. They formed a young adult-led organization as our Indian partner, the Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL). This is a team of all-volunteer young adult mentors and child/youth organizers addressing systemic justice issues in their local villages, orphanages and slums.

These young men and women have taught me the most important lesson about being a foreigner in India– to whom or what do you belong? The most important thing a study abroad student can do is ask themselves the hard question about what it means to be alive and to be accountable in their host country. Who invited you to this country? What privilege do you carry? To whom or what are you accountable to? While abroad, who are you breaking bread with? In a riff on the words of Ivan Illich, eloquent and seething critic of the benign “well-intentioned” blindness of international volunteerism– “Is your life even alive enough to be shared?”

Study abroad can give us the blog-worthy illusion of “radical” transformation. But real transformation occurs when we think critically about who we belong to, who we are accountable to and how we choose to move in a world where being from North America (and having the privilege to travel abroad) means you have a lot of privilege with a lot to learn.

This privilege does not mean authority. This privilege means responsibility to be self-reflective, critical and make changes that are uncomfortable to your own way of life– not to export your way of life or assume your life to be “the right way.”

Again– is your life alive enough to be shared?

Painting of Hindu deity Ganesh, with Tamil words, Crystal Bocheta, participant in CLP’s “Send US to India” program in 2011.

I am accountable to the incredible young adults in India who became my friends, brothers and sisters and who collaborated with me when CLP began and now lead the organization on their own. There are far too many to name here. To name only a small handful, I honor Arumugham, Amala, Shiva, Jugal, Basu, Karthik. I honor the first CLP child leaders who believed in the idea– Priya and Suhasini, Vimal and Arun… to name only some of the first twenty during that first trip to Tamil Nadu. I honor the people among them now and the people who will come after them. My gratitude and my devotion to them and the lessons they teach me –and hopefully teach you– about what accountability to a land and a people really mean.

Listen more. Talk less. Wait for an invitation. Be accountable to your actions, beliefs and privilege.

I learned an important saying in Tamil on one of my most recent trips to visit TYCL– “poyttu varen.” It is said when someone is leaving. It means that “although I go, I will return– because our relationship is important to me.” Or, more sweetly, “Go… and come back.”

So, when you live a life abroad, should you choose to do so, live in such a way that your neighbors, fellow students and teachers, mentors, host families and community might say such a thing to you.

Samantha Lynne Wilson is now in the second year of her Masters in Divinity at Claremont School of Theology, with in a focus on the ministry of youth-led community organizing. She can be reached at samantha@childleaderproject.org.

In “Witnessing History: Arab Spring,” part of UCTV Prime’s new series “Going Places: UC Education Abroad,” recent UC Berkeley graduate Justin Hinton takes us back to his unforgettable study abroad experience that placed the student journalist on the ground in Cairo, Egypt just as the Arab Spring was percolating in Tahrir Square. Since his segment was recorded, Justin has completed his program as a News Associate in Fort Worth and now reports for the CBS affiliate, KFDM, in Beaumont, Texas, about 90 miles east of Houston. But in this guest blog post, he offers additional perspective on how this momentous global event changed him.

Contributed by Justin Hinton

On August 24, 2010, the Justin Charles Hinton that I once knew began a transformation, turning my once seemingly average life into a world of boundless possibilities that continue to expand day by day.

As I planned to spend the academic year in Cairo, Egypt, I never could have imagined that five months later, I would stare danger in its face as I catapulted my face, voice, and camera into one of the largest revolutions to hit the Middle East. To add to that, I never would have imagined that my decision to travel to Egypt would have led me down a slippery slope of life changes that have made me a better person.

As a student journalist, Cairo was the perfect place for me. Dipping and dodging through traffic with deafening horns as taxi drivers raced through the non-lighted streets of Cairo became part of my daily routine. The Great Pyramid of Giza, the Nile River, Aswan, and The Library of Alexandria became part of my backyard. Twenty- cent meals consisting of beans, lettuce, and fries served as my daily breakfast and dinner as I walked the dust-stricken and poverty-engrossed streets of Sayeda Zeinab, only to reach the school-sponsored buses where I would sit and count the 3,600 seconds it would take to reach my destination at the American University of Cairo.

In the classroom I learned how to operate video cameras, present the news, and incorporate all of that information into blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and other multimedia platforms, something I hadn’t learned in my four years at Cal.

Outside the classroom, I learned even more. Gaining an understanding of the Islamic faith became a day-to-day experience as I sat through seminars about Islam, a religion that so many individuals in the Western world are ignorant of because of their largely inaccurate, preconceived notions about “Muslims” resulting from September 11.

But as they say, all great things must come to an end, or so I thought. On January 25, 2011 the crack of a baton and the first shot of tear gas set into motion my evacuation by the Education Abroad Program in Egypt. After leaving Cairo four months early, my advisors informed me that I could finish my program at another school. I chose Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, and the good times kept rolling, but not from the start.

When I first arrived, the high that I had from being evacuated from Egypt and launching into an entirely new culture quickly sunk to an ultimate low as I faced a culture steeped in media representations of African Americans. Life, to say the least, was hard, but after a month, I settled in and was back to my normal self. I met several Korean students. They changed my life forever.

As a journalist with friends across the globe, I know that if a story breaks in Egypt or Korea, I have people on the ground who can break it down into something that I can understand, or who can provide lodging when I travel to that country. They are friendships that are strong and I know will last a lifetime, and it all began with my study abroad experience.

FEATURED THIS MONTH

Study Abroad Students Enroll in Adventure

From witnessing history at the Berlin Wall to saving lives in a remote West African community, the new UCTV Prime original series “Going Places” shares the life-changing stories of participants in the University of California’s pioneering education abroad program. As the program marks 50 years of educating and inspiring global citizens, this series explores how UC study abroad students are influencing the world – and how the world is changing them.

Sleep, Stress & Obesity: A Weighty Issue

The UCSF Center for Obesity, Assessment, Study and Treatment presents one of the first scientific conferences to focus on the interactions between sleep, stress and obesity – our nation’s greatest epidemic and public health challenge. Leading researchers from across the country examine the problem from a variety of interesting angles, including how sleep and stress impact our metabolism and brain function, why adequate sleep and stress reduction may be the 21st century pillars of health, and more.

Big Dreams Bring Big Change

We continue our presentations from The Atlantic Meets the Pacific forum held at UC San Diego in October. This month you’ll be joined by The Atlantic’s James Fallows, “The Happiness Project” author Gretchen Rubin, video game designer Jane McGonigal, Calit 2’s Larry Smarr and more, all talking about improving the world –and our lives– through innovation, entrepreneurship and technology.

Human Origins and Autism

This fascinating and important series from UC San Diego’s Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) explores the newest understandings of the roots of autism disorders from the foremost researchers in the world.